Threat to Humanity
by Lizard Pie
Summary: Hirokazu/Ruki friendship: You fools, who try to wipe out any threat which challenges you, beating them until they die. And then you who do nothing. Do you ever think of the consiquences?
1. Childhood

AN: Twisted and bizarre, a lot of my strange ideas. This one is going off my story called Father. The whole point of the switch was to keep him hidden. But this story is trying to figure out what would happen if he was discovered.  
  
******  
  
The young girl sighed as she sat upon the cold cement ledge inside the pink dragon. It was rather large, enough to fit maybe three older children. That's exactly who would take it over every day before and after school.  
  
The fourth graders would chase away any one younger than themselves if they ever needed the ledge. The smaller ones had learned quickly to stay away. But they hadn't learned that at the morning bell to the school, there was no one to guard it. That was when she would go in.  
  
The girl didn't want to be with the other children. They were far too immature for her taste. She relaxed and closed her eyes. No one would bother her as long as she stayed in this.  
  
"MORNING!"  
  
The girl shrieked, falling of the ledge.  
  
Insane laughter exploded from upon the ledge as the girl stood and rid her clothes of the sand that had settled at the bottom.  
  
She looked to see who had humiliated her, not in front of other children (they were all playing safely at the other end of the park), but herself.  
  
Violet eyes met light blue and were trapped. The blue were studying her, looking all over her body though the pupils didn't budge. The girl struggled to look away at anything at all, just something away from the gaze. But the blue wouldn't have any of it. They held her there.  
  
The eyes moved away and slammed forward again as two foreheads collided. The girl once again fell to the sand, and the blue eyes shut as the owner once again began to laugh until tears flowed out from between the eyelids.  
  
"Thanks a lot, jerk. Don't you know your not supposed to be here?" the girl snapped. The child on the ledge stopped laughing and looked at her.  
  
"Why not? You're here," the child with blue eyes asked, tilting his head to the side as a dog would have when confused.  
  
The child was nothing but a boy her own age of six. His dress was casual formal, the type over protective parents force their children to wear. It didn't suit him, she thought, and obviously the feeling was more than mutual. The collar of the polo shirt had been tugged far enough that it now hung so that his whole shoulder could be revealed if he leaned the right way. His cru-cut was on an angle, his pants had grass stains on the knees, his shoes were untied, he looked horrible. But he was proud of the way he looked, and wouldn't hear anything on the matter.  
  
"Yes, I'm here. But that's because I'm different," the young girl told him, standing up to look as important as she could with sand in her now frazzled pony tail. The boy didn't look upset by the comment. He merely leaned his head back so that he looked her in the eyes upside down.  
  
"I'm different," he stated firmly.  
  
"Not enough," she said back. "You're not strong enough for it." The boy giggled once again and sat straight up. When he turned his head back to look at her, there was a smirk upon his face.  
  
"I got you off the ledge, didn't I?" She smiled at him and nodded.  
  
"I'm Ruki."  
  
"Hirokazu!"  
  
It wasn't the boy whom had stated the name, but a man from across the playground. He blushed and motioned with his head to the direction of the call.  
  
Jumping off the ledge, Hirokazu tore away from the dragon. Ruki watched him run, his legs and arms swinging around as if he had never actually learned to do anything of the sort.  
  
It wasn't long before he was in a young man's waiting arms, nuzzling his messy brown hair into the man's chest. The man, whom Ruki had decided was his father, looked disapprovingly at the appearance of the child in his arms, but smiled warmly and nodded as Hirokazu went on about whatever was on his mind at the moment.  
  
Ruki shook her head as her own parent called, and she trotted away from the dragon, the boy fading from her thoughts.  
  
******  
  
That was the first day the outside world had ever met Hirokazu.  
  
It was like a drug. First time he had it, he knew he needed to find more, and damned if he wasn't going to get it.  
  
******  
  
The two met the next day at the park, as well as the next and the rest of the days after that.  
  
They became friends, and close ones at that. Not that, on any other occasion, they would have, but there was no one else for Hirokazu.  
  
He insisted that he have at least one friend, and Ruki was the first he had met.  
  
But soon, it wasn't so much that Hirokazu wanted one, but that they began to need each other. They two would ban together on treks to whatever part of the playground they wanted to go to when the dragon began to grow old.  
  
He would make her laugh; she would listen to him when no one else would. They became inseparable. But then one day, Hirokazu began to change.  
  
It was suttle at first, he snapped at anyone who would dare get in their way. She thought it was nothing; the two of them had a reputation as being tough that they had to uphold. But then things began to get worse.  
  
Everyday, he would clutch his head or his stomach and cry until he was dehydrated or his throat hurt too much to continue. He would recover soon after that and become as hyper as ever. Ruki suggested he might be sick, and he brushed her off with his hand. He swore he was never sick. It was just some thing he had for lunch or he hadn't slept well that night.  
  
It wasn't long before he began to beat up children for something as simple as looking at him. These weren't just a scraped knee or a black eye, these were him punching and kicking and biting until the victim was bleeding and begging for mercy. He wouldn't even have stopped then in his father didn't snatch him away and scold him, then drag his son away from the park.  
  
After those began to occur on a daily basis, the only time the two could be together was within his room or the porch outside if the whether was nice enough.  
  
Then, he would pace back and forth on the rug, which he must have been doing when she wasn't around because in certain areas it was worn though completely.  
  
She told him he should come back to the park, and he laughed at her. He ruffled her hair as an adult would when a child would say something cute. She hated when he did that, it was degrading.  
  
The day came, right before his seventh birthday, that he told her he would be moving. She cried and asked him why, and he turned his head away. He, instead of explaining, gave her a gift.  
  
Between her now unformed breasts, he cut a long, deep gash with a piece of a smashed toy car. She didn't cry as he mopped up the blood with a wet rag. She didn't cry when he sat next to the window with his knees curled up to his chest and watched the sun set. She didn't cry when he refused to look back at her. She only put on her coat, zipped it up so that no one couldn't see where the blood was seeping though her shirt, and left for home, which was beside the building he lived within.  
  
When she got home, she dressed her wound and threw out the blood stained shirt alone. She never told anyone of the incident. In fact, she refused to let herself even think of him.  
  
She didn't hear of him again until she was ten.  
  
******  
  
It was four years later when Hirokazu again rejoined the world. This time, it was at another school, another town. Where no one knew of his past, no one knew of him.  
  
Perfect.  
  
His father had driven him to school on his first day. Hirokazu fidgeted with the belt buckle, his finger circling around and around the release. His father pulled it away and placed it back into his lap to join its partner.  
  
Hirokazu gazed out the window, watching the world fly by. The whirl began to slow until it was a stop in front of the school.  
  
"…Is that clear?" His father asked.  
  
"Yeah!" Hirokazu yelled, grabbing his book bag and galloping toward the playground. He stopped there, scanning for what he needed.  
  
Outcasts. They were easy to befriend, because there was no one for him to compete with. There was plenty to choose from in this crowd.  
  
His sights settled on two boys sitting on the far corner of the soccer field, trying to play a card game but getting no success. The team wanted the field and they wanted it at that exact second.  
  
No one messed with the team.  
  
Hirokazu strut over like the world was his. Not at all because he believed himself strutting, but because that was the only way he knew to walk. It suited him, which was all he knew.  
  
When he arrived at where the two were playing, a game was already commencing. He knelt down beside it and waited to be acknowledged. Such things were delicate.  
  
The brunette was the first to look up from his cards.  
  
"Are you new here?" He asked. Hirokazu thought about the question for a second before deciding to nod. "Where'd you move from?"  
  
"Down south," Hirokazu told the two who were now focused upon him. The boy with glasses nodded, placing another card down on the board.  
  
"That was a mistake," Hirokazu laughed softly. The boy with glasses ignored the suggestion, but soon found the prediction to be correct. He lost, hard.  
  
Hirokazu began to arrange the cards into an unbeatable force field. One that hit so fast and powerfully that the fact that it's defensive properties were next to none didn't matter.  
  
That was how Takato and Kenta accepted Hirokazu. He wouldn't have to worry about his status until later that year.  
  
******  
  
Right before the saga in the Digital World was the meeting, where all the tamers and soon to be had to join up and decide to leave together.  
  
Ruki was the last to arrive; she had some sort of lesson she was too embarrassed about to state what it was. Truth being, no one actually noticed. They were far to busy with the card game Jen and Hirokazu had begun over a rare. Not a bad match, but Ruki couldn't be ignored for something as simple as that.  
  
She kneeled down and whispered into Jen's ear. He smirked and placed down a card.  
  
Hirokazu took one look at it and cursed. He tossed over the card, collected his own, and walked over to where Kenta stood. He felt a little safer far away from the board where he could assess the situation.  
  
He looked the new arrival up and down, trying to connect her in his mind with the past that he remembered. No, he decided. She wasn't the right one. Her hair was to light and her eyes weren't the right shade. They were colder than he remembered; the color almost like a plate of ice had been drawn over the iris.  
  
Takato, trying to be the moderator of the group, introduced everyone. But it was obvious he had no idea what to say because the introductions were far from flattering. Ruki was unimpressed with Kenta and Juri, but trying not to show how much so.  
  
Hirokazu had lost interest in waiting for Takato to arrive at him long before he was done with introducing the first person. He had, instead, taken to hanging from a tree branch by his knees and shuffling though the deck.  
  
"And that's Hirokazu," Takato said, motioning to the hanging boy with his fist, "He's, well, he's Hirokazu. Let's leave it at that."  
  
The boy looked up at the sound of his name, giving her a cheesy smile. It faded as blue and violet eyes became trapped in one another. They held for thirty seconds before Takato tore her away.  
  
She mouthed "Meet me later at the dragon". He nodded.  
  
******  
  
Hirokazu had taken a seat upon the top of the cement overhang above the ledge, his long legs sprawled around the tan horns. He would shift uncomfortably as his weight would lean forward and one of the spikes would catch between his legs from time to time, but other wise, he was perfectly still.  
  
All he could do was watch Ruki pace back and forth along the sand, her arms crossed. Renamon sat upon a tree branch, looking everywhere but at Ruki, as if it were just a coincidence that they were at the same place at the same time.  
  
"Why did you come back?" She asked. Hirokazu looked at her silently and shook his head.  
  
"No, the question is why did you seek me out?" He replied slowly, placing his foot before a spike so that it no longer bothered him.  
  
"We weren't supposed to meet again," She told him, climbing up so they sat back to back. "It just hurts too much."  
  
"I promise it won't again. There's no more need for pain," he told her, leaning his head back so that his now long hair intertwined with her ponytail.  
  
******  
  
The events of the Digiworld came to pass, all playing out with fights of which of the two would become dominant. They ended with a draw as neither saw a need to fight with so much else to worry about.  
  
But the tension between the two only really lifted in the Arc going back to the Real World.  
  
It was dark, almost completely if someone would have turned off the red light that really seemed there for mere decoration.  
  
Ruki had chosen the back corner to nurse the injured Digimon she held. Impmon had passed out long before arriving onto the ship, and made no move to resist her touch. She wondered if he would have, had he been awake.  
  
But without any tools or training, all she could do was run her hands through his fur. It sprung right back as her hand left it behind, short near black hairs fixing themselves to look exactly as they had before Ruki had begun to ruffle them.  
  
"How is he?" Hirokazu asked, sitting beside her. She focused on a small cut upon the Digimon's left ear. It was so much easier than looking at the boy next to her.  
  
"He won't be doing any better if you don't leave," she snarled under her breath.  
  
"He's going to be exactly the same no matter where I sit on this thing, so he'll just have to learn to live with it," Hirokazu hissed back.  
  
Ruki glared at him. "He shouldn't have to learn to live with a pompous, hyperactive little jackass. You should give him a little room."  
  
"Maybe Impmon should stop being such a self absorbed bitch and figure out that there are other people in this world other than herself that she needs to deal with," Hirokazu roared. He moved to the other end of the ship.  
  
Impmon shifted uncomfortably in his sleep. He wanted that boy, whatever his name was, to come back. It was warmer that way.  
  
******  
  
It was a few months after that the Tamers met once again. They sat within the shelter Guilmon had once used. No one was speaking; it had just been too long to jump into a conversation like they once had.  
  
Everyone had returned, even the two twins with Impmon still in his Baby 1 stage sleeping. There must just not have been a reason to get out of it.  
  
The silence went on for five minutes before Hirokazu, not surprisingly, began to bore of it. He had better things to do than wait for someone to talk.  
  
He stood and began to walk away, calling his partner to his side with a whistle. The Digimon was all too happy to comply, bounding after him and until he tagged at the boy's heels like a puppy would.  
  
Hirokazu didn't get four steps out before men in suits grabbed him by the arms and hand cuffed his limbs. Neither Hirokazu, nor his Baby 2 stage partner, were pleased with their situation, of course. Hirokazu tried to turn and bite one of his attackers.  
  
"You have the right to remain docile. If you make a motion to harm anyone along the way, there is a warrant out to dispose of you," one man told him disgustedly. Hirokazu looked pleadingly back toward his friends, who were in a stunned silence. The men didn't even acknowledge the children as they scooped up the Digimon and shoved the two into a black van.  
  
Before anyone of the children could break out of the trance to see where the van was going, it had already driven out of sight. 


	2. Adulthood

The next year, a bus hit and killed Takato while he was riding his bike to school. It was humorous in a way, no Digimon no matter how powerful could kill him and yet something as simple as a bus did. He was buried quickly atop an office building, a marble headstone, flowers and a Terminal left to mark where he'd been laid.  
  
Guilmon eventually wandered into the Digital World. They offered to give him a home, but he swore that Takato was simply playing a game of hide and seek there. After a month of no contact, they assumed that he had been deleted or was someplace where he was happier than on Earth.  
  
With the two concreting members of the Tamers gone, the group began to slip apart. Kenta's parents, the over protective people that they were, moved him to America to be away from the monsters. Everyone assumed he'd smuggled MarineAngemon in his pocket, just like the old days.  
  
Juri became a gothic, complete with black dress and makeup. But it was over Takato, and the D-Reaper was nowhere in sight, so they assumed everything was all right. They would just watch.  
  
Jenrya joined a regional team for karate, moving farther into the country to train, someplace. He called every once and a while, but he never told anyone where he was. He said it screwed up his concentration or something of the sort. He'd taken Terriermon and Suzie with him.  
  
Ryo, well, no one really knew what happened to him. He left the park one day with a headache and never came back. A few claimed he'd left for the Digiworld again. It was later discovered that his father had been stationed in China, taking his son with him. Ryo never called, no one knew whether he wasn't allowed to or he simply didn't want to. Either way, he lost contact.  
  
The Tamers Ai and Matoko, well, they'd never really joined. Sure, they'd been introduced, but they'd never come again. No one missed them, no one knew to.  
  
The group had fallen, leaving Ruki in Tokyo to her studies and Renamon.  
  
Hirokazu still hadn't come back. His parents, well, they disappeared. Kenta had gone the next day and their house had been emptied rather hurriedly. There were many of Hirokazu's possessions left. Only weeks later, the home caught fire and went up in a gigantic blaze of flame and ash roughly thirty feet tall. It took hours to calm the inferno. The fire department claimed it was an electrical fire, nothing more than routine. They turned their backs when a man ran out of the area, a can of gasoline under his arm and a box of matches falling out of his pocket. Mrs. Asagi refused to speak of the incident, and all traces of Shiota Hirokazu were wiped from the records. Files were shredded in record time; they didn't have many on him to begin with. With that done, they never allowed anyone to speak his name. He wasn't a human, he never was, he was only a curse word.  
  
Thus, ten years passed. Ruki finished school early to take a government job as close to the Digiworld as she could while the portal was still closed.  
  
She was simply an apprentice to the doctors when she was assigned to her first project.  
  
***  
  
"Now Ms. Makino," Dr. Kumigi told her, turning his gaze lightly from his clipboard, "You do understand that you will be in this project alone? You won't be allowed to ask for assistance unless he lashes out physically."  
  
"Yes sir," She nodded mechanically, keeping her eyes on the metal floor that passed beneath her feet. Its silver coating glistened in the artificial light, staying just before her feet before swooping under them to be replaced by another shine. It always happened this way when they walked down the hallway of the experiments.  
  
"And, then, your Digimon," the Doctor said firmly, clutching the clipboard to his chest and turning around. Ruki looked up.  
  
"My Digimon, sir?" She asked, giving Renamon a sideward glance. The fox paid her little if any mind, choosing to focus her attention on one of the doors to an experiment's cell.  
  
"You'll have to control her, Ms. Makino. We can't have her breaking any of them out before we can learn anything about them, now can we?" He asked matter-of-factly. Ruki was stunned.  
  
"Sir, with all due respect, she has never caused any trouble here," Ruki told him, keeping her eyes on the floor as she stepped between the doctor and her partner. Renamon looked over with faint interest, she'd heard these arguments before.  
  
"Ms. Makino, are you telling me that you are so experienced in this field that you could recognize if a Digimon is a threat to the progress of an experiment or not?" He snapped. She shook her head.  
  
"No sir, I apologize. I'll keep an eye on her," Ruki muttered, her eyes still on the floor. The doctor looked pleased at the obedience.  
  
"Well then, I'll show you to your subject," The doctor smiled, continuing to walk down the seemingly endless hall. "He was captured ten years ago, but our agents have reason to believe he'd been here much longer than that," he went on.  
  
"What is he, sir?" Ruki asked, quickening her pace to keep up.  
  
"One of the creatures assigned to guard the border between the real and Digital world. There are quite a few of them; we were lucky he escaped so that we could study them. They're clever little bastards," he smirked as if he'd been the soul reason that the guard had been captured. "He's a rare capture, you'll have to be careful with him. We can't afford to loose him if there's no grantee of another one coming along." The doctor stopped in front of cell number 19276. The light was streaming from the single window of unbreakable glass, as it always did. They wanted their experiments under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. She peeked in the window, but saw nothing.  
  
"Does he have a name, sir?" She asked, "I don't think he would appreciate me going in and calling him 19276." She peered further in, but could see no more. He must have been sitting against the door.  
  
"He's been tamed into that name, Ms. Makino, and that is what you shall call him," The doctor told her firmly. "I'll leave you to your work." He turned on his heel and headed down the hallway. In a second, he had disappeared down the twisting of the passage.  
  
"I guess there's nothing left to do but go in," she shrugged, knocking upon the metal door. She heard scurrying inside, waiting for it to silence before she pushed open the cell's heavy blockade.  
  
"So, now I'm just something to test their children?" 19276 asked, looking over her with unforgiving gray eyes. He stroked a smaller Digimon, which he clutched to his chest possessively, to stop it's whimpering.  
  
"That's not what I'm here for," she assured him, letting Renamon enter before she shut the door.  
  
"Liar. Just like the others," he sighed, curling his bare legs up to enclose the small Digimon. "Just get out of here."  
  
"I can't just leave," she protested.  
  
"That's what the door's for."  
  
She ran her hands through her hair. Renamon stepped between the two of them.  
  
"You aren't going to get rid of me that easily," she told him firmly. He stood, leaving the Digimon on the ground. He was only a boy of thirteen, scrawny yet firm as he stood upon wiry legs. He'd been stripped of all clothing except which kept him decent, his thin body showing the black and blue welts coming from years of heavy abuse. His shaggy hair hung down to his stomach, allowing him only to peek through the greasy bangs.  
  
Yet, he looked like he could take care of himself, that she couldn't stand in his way no matter how hard she told herself she could.  
  
"He's only an experiment," she told herself in her head. "Completely controlled. He's nothing more than that."  
  
"What part of get out aren't you understanding?" 19276 snarled, clenching his fists.  
  
"I can't leave you," she said, sitting down on the worn cot and crossing her legs.  
  
"Why not?" He snapped.  
  
"Because you're my job," she told him. He narrowed his eyes.  
  
"That's all I am anymore, isn't it; someone's damn job," he let out a frustrated sigh. "You can't see through anything anymore." He crossed his arms and turned away from her. "Just leave."  
  
"I can't. I have a…" she began.  
  
"A job, I know," he said, interrupting her, "You and the millions of others they've dragged through here."  
  
Her mouth drawn into a firm line she left the room. Renamon trailed out quickly before the door was shut with a heavy thud. 19276 watched her from the window, not finding any joy in her leaving. He never did. Another would be there soon.  
  
She'd pressed the button.  
  
***  
  
"That was him, wasn't it?" Ruki asked as she made her way down the hall. Renamon walked behind her, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.  
  
"If by him you mean Hirokazu, then yes, it was," she said softly.  
  
"What happened to him? He's so…young," she shuttered, clutching her shoulders, "It's been years."  
  
"He's like me. He evolves, he doesn't grow," she explained lightly. "And with a Digimon like him, he has to have permission to go up higher. After getting captured, I guess he isn't in their favor any more."  
  
"Ms. Makino, did you have trouble?" The doctor asked, two men standing beside him, punishers in their hands, charged and ready to go.  
  
"Not…not that much trouble," she said softly. But the two men were already half way down the hall, running at full speed. The punishers glowed with blue electricity, humming loudly. Inside the cells, she could hear the experiments cringe.  
  
"Sir, this isn't necessary," Ruki protested. The doctor led her back to the laboratory, the clipboard tapping in his hand.  
  
"It's always necessary with creatures like him," The doctor told her, with a smirk. "It's the only way they learn. One day, you will two, Ms. Makino. One day, you will two." 


End file.
